Trip to Warsaw

Last weekend Tanja, Clara, and I went on our first intra-European trip since we moved to Germany. We visited our friend Lukasz, who was in Tanja's year in the Penn Linguistics department and now lives in Warsaw in his native Poland. Warsaw is almost due East from Berlin, as you can see in this map:


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The line marks the driving directions - we took the train. I'm not quite sure why, but I really love photos of Clara riding on the train. I like how you can see how much she's changing and growing with each subsequent train photo. In any case, here is Clara when we had just boarded our cabin in Berlin Hauptbahnhof:


The train goes through Frankfurt (Oder) and crosses the border into Poland about an hour and a half after leaving Berlin. At the first stop after the Polish border they change crews and engines, while we were parked we noticed this little engine on another track, and we thought it was really cute (see the zoomed photo).


We traveled on Thursday, which was a holiday in Germany but not Poland. Lukasz met us briefly that evening (he hosted us in his apartment) but it was a long day of travel, so no photos. The next evening after Lukasz finished work he took us for a bit of a city tour and then treated us to a fantastic dinner at a restaurant that specializes in Polish food. Since we knew we were going to a special dinner Clara wore her pretty green dress:




The next photo was taken on the old city wall:


Clara with Lukasz at dinner:


Clara did fantastic at dinner! For Lukasz, Tanja, and I it was a four course dinner, but for Clara it was more like a six course dinner, since she ate (and loved) a bit of everything! The top three dishes for me were Tanja's steak, my (huge) perogie appetizer, and the sour soup that started the meal. After dinner Clara burned off a bit of energy on a large square that was next to the restaurant.



On Saturday Clara came down with a bit of a fever. I think she'd been battling a virus since about Tuesday last week or so (that's why her eyes are a bit puffy in some of the photos above). In the morning we took her for a walk through a large park close to Lukasz's apartment. We put her in the sling, and I think it's the first time I've carried her in the sling since about September or so.


That afternoon Clara took a long nap while I read a book and Tanja and Lukasz saw a bit more of the town and ran a few errands. In the evening we toured more of the old city, including a very large park that had pretty flowers:


and pretty peacocks:


It was a long walk, so Clara got to be carried by all three of us for most of the way.


As evening came on we climbed a set of stairs up to a castle overlooking the park, and enjoyed the view for a bit before heading out to dinner.


Clara did amazingly well on the trip, especially considering she was coming down with something. She was almost always in very high spirits, and she was shockingly well mannered at all of the restaurants! On the ride back to Berlin Clara's fever started to take its toll, and she rode home tired and pretty content to sit on Tanja's lap for most of the way. Just to reassure everyone, we visited the doctor today, and it's probably just a typical virus. Clara took a four hour nap this afternoon (making up for yesterday, I guess?) and she was only a little warm and in a great mood this evening.

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Last weekend my PhD adviser and his wife were in Berlin, and we had a great chance to catch up with them. On Saturday I visited the German Historical Museum with them, and it was amazing! We spent at least two hours in the old part of the museum, and saw less than a quarter of it! I'm looking forward to getting a chance to visit it again the next time we have visitors!

While I was there I had the treat of observing a bilingual family with children around ten years old or so. The mother was explaining hyperinflation and the introduction of a new currency in the Weimar Republic to her son in German, and he would interrupt and ask her questions in English! It was great for me both to see how natural it was for the parents and kids, and also because the questions a ten year old asks about hyperinflation are totally awesome.

"So if I had 500 billion marks then if I changed to the new money I would only get twenty cents?"
"Ja."
"So then what would I get if I had 500 billion and 25 marks?"
"Kuck mal, was ist das hier? Wie funktioniert das?"

(The mother deflected the question by pointing at another exhibit and asking him to try to figure out how it worked)